University Business - February 2008 - (Page 14)

BEHIND the NEWS Clery Act Fine Sets a Precedent EASTERN MICHIGAN UNIVER SITY has been fined $357,500 by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to comply with the federal Jeanne Clery Act. It’s the largest fine ever imposed. Security On Campus, a nonprofit whose founders spearheaded the act (named for a student who was murdered in her dorm room in 1986) hopes the precedent will give institutional leaders pause. signal” that compliance must be taken seriously. Executive Director Jonathan Kassa says the act isn’t meant to be “a paper tiger; it has to have teeth.” Regarding EMU, Carter adds, “If they just had the right policies, the right checks and balances in place, I don’t believe this would have happened.” A DOE report cited four violations of $27,500 each: failure to provide timely warning; lack of administrative capability; lack of timely warning policy; and failure to properly maintain the crime log. The school was also fined $82,500 for each of three years for failure to properly disclose crime statistics, lack of adequate policy statements, and failure to report all required statistics. EMU officials have requested a hearing, says spokesman Ward Mullens, adding that officials are only questioning how the amount was determined. “We’ve made positive steps in securing safety,” he says. “We don’t know if that was reflected in the report as much as it should have been.” Measures include increasing police patrols on campus, enhancing the video surveillance system on campus, and hiring a security firm to augment the Department of Public Safety. Gregory A. O’Dell, deputy chief of the Ann Arbor Police Department, has been named the executive director of Public Safety (pending board approval). The fine brings the estimated cost of EMU’s repercussions from the handling of the tragedy to $3.8 million in severance packages, legal fees, and penalties. The university has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the Dickinson family. —Michele Herrmann U From a Sad Cubicle to Happy Mentions PERHAPS DAVID GUNNELLS NEVER thought his contest entry would become a source of office humor. An information systems specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Gunnells won Wired News’ Saddest Cubicle Contest for his photo and description of a workspace that apparently lived up to that title. The following paragraph told it all: “His desk is penned in by heavily used filing cabinets in a windowless conference room, near a poorly ventilated bathroom and a microwave. The overhead light doesn’t work—his mother-in-law was so saddened by his cube that she gave him a lamp—and the other side of the wall is a parking garage. Gunnells recalls a day when one co-worker reheated catfish in the microwave, while another used the bathroom and covered the smell with a stinky air freshener. Lovely.” Office conditions aside, the Occupational Health & Safety building, in which Gunnells’ sadlooking workspace was depicted, has been under renovation, according to university spokesperson Bob Shepard. Currently, Gunnells works in a private office. As the contest winner, Gunnells has gotten a lot of media attention, being interviewed or mentioned in local and national stories. While he initially talked to reporters, now he’s shying away from further publicizing it, says Shepard. For his “win,” Gunnells received a prize from Wired—a RoboMan Webcam. —M.H. Fined: Eastern Michigan officials in the aftermath of a campus murder. The penalty is made up of 13 individual fines of $27,500 each. That amount is based on findings that EMU officials violated specific requirements of the act following the campus murder of student Laura Dickinson in December 2006. Originally they said there was “no foul play” in her death, and then they stood by that decision when a male suspect, a fellow student, was arrested last February. Passed by Congress in 1990, the law requires colleges that receive federal funds to collect and release information about campus crime and to issue warnings about threats to campus safety. According to S. Daniel Carter, SOC senior vice president, in its early years the act was not properly enforced, so the EMU fine “sends a strong SOUND BITE ‘T he folks in Washington are saying you’re hoarding money. And we felt uneasy about it ourselves. —Yale President Richard Levin on the decision to spend more of its endowment. ‘ 14 | February 2008 universitybusiness.com http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - February 2008

University Business - February 2008
Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Future Shock
Independent Outlook
On the Hill
Facilities Focus
Cover Story: Orientation Rites: Seal the Deal
A Sense of Security
Growing the Giving Tree
Are We Covered?
Baby Boomers, Back to Campus
Internet Technology
What's New
Calendar of Events
End Note

University Business - February 2008